The Lonely Worlds

On the 27th of January, I began a project currently called The Lonely Worlds. I don't want to say too much about it yet. It's intended to be a serial. It's a setting I've been noodling with for fifteen years or so and I recently worked out enough characters to have a good chance at it. I currently have four chapters written on it with a good start on a fifth.

The typewriter

Last time, I discussed the low-powered computer I put Alpine Linux on for writing purposes. Due in part to the workflow enabled by the typewriter, I managed to write about 47K in January without really trying.

I still don't recommend doing Alpine Linux yourself but if you want to use some of the tools I mentioned in that post, I've adjusted my micro settings files since last time.

settings.json:

{
	"softwrap": true,
	"wordwrap": true,
	"autosave": 60,
	"cursorline": true
}

bindings.json:

{
    "Alt-/": "lua:comment.comment",
    "CtrlUnderscore": "lua:comment.comment",
    "F5": "lua:wc.wordCount",
    "Insert": "lua:wc.wordCount"
}

Next week's goals

I have a few high priority tasks I have to take care of this next week that don't involve writing directly. So, my writing / creativity goal is ... to do some of that. 😹

#ProgressUpdate

The typewriter

I've been working on setting up a low powered computer with Alpine Linux. You know how people are always saying Linux is so easy now that anyone can do it? Don't do that with Alpine Linux. It was originally intended for running on high security, niche devices. It's probably most commonly used in Docker images. Most people who interact with it probably don't put it on an actual computer.

Why did I want to? I've been using Linux since 2000. Possibly a little earlier. The first time I used it, I did it on an aging computer that I couldn't afford to upgrade. That describes most of the computers I've used it on, actually. The challenge in most of those cases was stripping something pretty full spec down to the point where it ran pretty tolerably.

In this case, I wanted to do it on purpose. On finding out about Alpine, I realized I had the perfect opportunity. The regular install's ISO takes up less than 400 MiB of space. Everything you want, you're adding to that count. Putting Xfce on it along with some other packages I needed have taken me to about 2 GiB. I'd like to set it up so it doesn't load Xfce by default but, right now, I'm most focused on making it a writing computer.

And technically it is. I'm typing this on it right now. The network connection is off. I'm typing this using the micro text editor from a virtual terminal.

When I get it back to a network, I'll run a Unison profile I created. It will copy this and any other local changes up to the network.

Some of my scripts aren't working ... yet but the Typewriter lives.

Update since I wrote the previous section

Turning off Xfce on boot turned out to be much easier than my experience with LXQt. I disabled automatic startup for the display manager using the rc-update del command used in Alpine for removing services from run groups.

When I do want to load the GUI, I type startx and it comes up.

For micro to be a good prose writing tool, I had to put this in .config/micro/settings.json:

{
	"softwrap": true,
	"wordwrap": true
}

To make Unison work the way I wanted, I created the profile using the GUI on my main Linux computer and adjusted it until it worked the way I wanted. I did a replace all on paths that were specific to my main Linux computer.

I've also adapted some of my writing related scripts for use on Alpine.

Outcomes

Due in part to Typewriter, I wrote almost 13K words in the last week. Typewriter has only been really operational for three writing days and, in those writing days, I wrote 10.5K words. That's an average of 3.3K words per day.

For me, those are pretty good numbers. If those are sustainable, I could write about 23K in a week.

Next week's goals

This is going to be a little sparse for a while.

1. Figure out my next project
2. Get some words written
3. Record at least one video

The current projects are resuming The Novel, starting work on Fallen Heaven, or writing book 3 of Vay Ideal.

I'm leaning toward working on a novel because I think a published Novel will probably drive some purchases of the Vay Ideal books. Adding additional Vay Ideal books while I'm not really having sales on Vay Ideal yet is probably not a useful thing at the moment.

With my improved word count from Typewriter, I did a bit of work on both Book 3 and The Novel.

#ProgressUpdate #VayIdeal

1. Finish audio production and get most of the visual elements done for the super-secret project
2. Create audiobook account and finish production on audiobook for Death In Transit

Unfortunately, I didn't complete either. The super-secret project is still manageable but I may have to scale down some elements. There's two things impacting the audio production. The first part is that I can't produce the audio on my main computer because Audacity is having constant issues. The second part is personal stuff I couldn't have anticipated. Nothing truly bad, just a hectic week at the Barret household.

I've managed to squeeze a little writing time in this week and that makes me feel like a writer again. 😹

Next week's goals

Big thing is the super-secret project.

#ProgressUpdate

1. Press publish on Book 2 of Vay Ideal before the Smashwords 'deadline' Done — New Names, Old Crimes
2. Write some words on Book 3 Done — Some of them are included in the preview at the end of New Names, Old Crimes
3. Create audiobook account and finish production on audiobook for Death In Transit
4. Work on super-secret project Done — I didn't specify what. I'll get into it a bit.

Unfortunately, when publishing New Names, Old Crimes, I accidentally used the wrong cover. That required me to go back and fix the book in three separate places but supposedly I had to wait until it was out on a given platform before editing. I think that was probably actually true for Amazon. I'm not sure whether it was true for Kobo. It appears not to have been true for D2D because the book still isn't in all its systems and I managed to get it updated anyway.

That kind of put a whammy on my week.

I legitimately don't know when I would have found the time to work on the audiobooks with the other things I worked on. I do need to try to get those in before the beginning of the year.

Other things I worked on

I created a Youtube channel and added my video version of the story Wrapped as a short. It turns out to be 30 seconds long as a short. I learned a lot. Mostly that I cannot use my phone's camera for video without it looking like trash. But also that hardcoding subtitles in is a waste since Youtube has its own system for doing that with shorts.

My roommate and I have shared custody of a good video camera and I've got that charging for the next adventure.

The super-secret project

For a few years, I've wanted to do a puppet video for Christmas. Last year, I started making the puppets. This year, I'm not too keen on actually finishing and recording the puppets when I have some other options available to me. I've done the audio recordings. The audio needs to be effectively produced in order for me to do the other bits.

Next week's goals

1. Finish audio production and get most of the visual elements done for the super-secret project
2. Create audiobook account and finish production on audiobook for Death In Transit

Yep, it looks short but all the work going into the super-secret project to have it ready before Christmas is kinda going to be a lot.

#ProgressUpdate #VayIdeal

1. Design a cover for Book 2 – Done though I might tweak it some.
2. Finish missing scenes – Done.
3. Major edits – Done and then some.
4. First pass audio recording – I'm not quite sure what I meant by that. I'm either way past it or I'm most of the way there. Either way, it will be complete before the impending deadline.

Not goals but still accomplished:

• More plotting on Fallen Heaven
• Finished plotting Book 3 of Vay Ideal

So, that's a pretty good week. I also wrote Web browsers have betrayed us and a bit of flash fiction (bluesky – Sharkey). I'm contemplating whether it makes sense to produce things like the flash fiction and the blog as videos on YouTube instead. I haven't made much traction on social media.

Like ... not talking about sales in that sense. I haven't looked at those yet. 😹

I know how to build a following over time. I did it when Twitter was still a place worth being. In my heart, I feel like the things that build a community remain the same over time. Some jokes. Positive but meaningful discussion. Promoting others' work, not in the hopes that they'll return the favor, but because I genuinely want to see their stuff succeed.

I was never Twitter famous but, while being myself, I did build a group of mutuals that was pretty reasonable at the time I was doing it. I have a feeling that doing that again is going to be a key component of making creativity work as my 'day job' over time.

Next week's goals

1. Press publish on Book 2 of Vay Ideal before the Smashwords 'deadline'
2. Write some words on Book 3
3. Create audiobook account and finish production on audiobook for Death In Transit
4. Work on super-secret project

It would be great if I could have Book 3 release in audio and ebook simultaneously. I'm getting closer to that possibility but the next step is releasing Death In Transit in audio to begin with.

Personal

This week has been incredibly long. If I didn't have some big goals I need to hit by Monday, I would be trying to take it easy for the next few days.

#ProgressUpdate #VayIdeal

Smashwords (the vendor I use to get my books out to the places I don't have accounts with) has an upcoming deadline for anything that needs to be done / ready in time for the Christmas season. That means if I want to get book 2 published in time for the holidays, I need to prioritize finishing book two and getting the audio recorded.

Since I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing for book 3 yet, book 2 might not have the “next time on” section like Death In Transit has. I'm not so committed to the bit that I would delay the release of book 2 for that.

Next week's goals

1. Design a cover for Book 2
2. Finish missing scenes
3. Major edits
4. First pass audio recording

If I get any proper writing in, great. As long as I get those bits in too!

#ProgressUpdate

Some of the vendors went through quickly. I'm technically waiting on some of the library systems to accept but, as of this moment, the ebook is available in most places where the ebook can be available.

I didn't set a wordcount goal for the week. Which is good because I don't think I wrote anything on The Novel.

I did a teensy bit development work on a book I'm giving the nickname Fallen Angels.

#ProgressUpdate

What I need to get done this coming week is the creation of my audiobook account and the formatting and uploading of the first ebook to KDP, KWL, and D2D.

#ProgressUpdate

I don't really want to focus that much on politics here but politics have real world impacts and I'm a part of that real world impact.

Admin day

My goal for this week was to get my accounts set up on Amazon, Kobo, and Author's Republic. Amazon ended up being very stressful but I did get that and Kobo set up. Author's Republic will have to wait a little bit.

Audiobook

I've gotten kind of mixed feedback from Author's Republic about the internal format of an audiobook. Is it 5 or 10 seconds seconds of silence at the beginning and ending? Does silence mean absolute silence of the sort that fails ACX Check? Questions I don't have to solve today but questions I do need to solve sooner rather than later.

Whatever they're after will likely not require the same sort of production effort that was required over the last weeks of October.

Writing progress

The only real writing I got done this week was on The Novel. My wordcount for the week is about 4000 words. That's significantly light of where I'd like to be.

#ProgressUpdate